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Lake Epuyen to El Bolson

Wed, 02/23/2011 - 20:12 — MacKenzie

A beautiful smooth ride North on Route 40

Finally finished with the Ripio - A welcome sign of asphault

This ride was so smooth that we didn´t want to stop and take photos but enjoy the 40km instead. For the most part the traffic was relatively calm and we usually had access to a 3-foot wide should when there was a lot of traffic.

We stopped to grab some banana nut bread at a cafe in the morning, and then once spotting blackberries off the side of the road, picked a bunch of those in the afternoon to cook with for the next few days. As we road into town, we spotted more breweries but it was siesta and those were not open.

French toast and roadside harvested blackberries make for awesome camping breakfast

Once in town, we pigged out in El Bolson and dropped camp in town. From the moment we got here, we decided this would be a good place to settle in for a few days. Ryan has to do more web site work, so this was a good place to land. If you want to fatten up, El Bolson is the place. A great artisan market with good food and crafted items, tons of great restaurants and helado shops, and of course the locally brewed beer. The art scene here is strong as well. We even saw some chopper bikes blasting out beats through megophone speakers while walking around at night. There is even an acrobat camp here, which you don´t see every day on the map. The backpacker scene here is huge and the there are dozens of places to camp in town. Ours at Refugio Patigonia has hundreds of spaces available. Outside of town, there are many more refugios up in the mountains to accomodate the various hikes and summits one can do in this area. It´s a great place all around and we are having a relaxing time here. Next section of biking will be up to Bariloche.